Blackwater pays price for Iraqi
firefight By Daniel Luban
WASHINGTON - The Iraqi government
announced on Monday that it had revoked the
license of one of the most prominent private US
security firms operating in Iraq, a decision that
is expected to cause friction with US occupying
forces, which have increasingly come to rely on
private contractors to meet their logistical and
security needs.
The decision to revoke the
license of Blackwater USA came one day after a
Baghdad firefight left eight civilians dead, the
latest in
a
string of incidents involving private security
contractors that have engendered resentment among
Iraqis.
The Iraqi government also promised
to prosecute those responsible for the deaths, a
demand that is likely to become another source of
tension with the US and which drives home the
legal gray area in which military contractors
currently operate.
Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a
spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said
that contractors believed to be Blackwater
employees opened fire on civilians in western
Baghdad on Sunday, killing eight and injuring 13
more. US officials stated that the incident began
when a convoy of State Department vehicles came
under small-arms fire, the Associated Press
reported.
"We have canceled the license of
Blackwater and prevented them from working all
over Iraqi territory," Khalaf told reporters. "We
will also refer those involved to Iraqi judicial
authorities."
But Blackwater USA
spokesperson Anne Tyrrell said in a statement late
on Monday, "Blackwater's independent contractors
acted lawfully and appropriately in response to a
hostile attack in Baghdad on Sunday. Blackwater
regrets any loss of life but this convoy was
violently attacked by armed insurgents, not
civilians, and our people did their job to defend
human life."
The expulsion of Blackwater
contractors could greatly hamper the US military
effort in Iraq, which has come to rely on
Blackwater to provide security for many leading
officials, including Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
But Prattap Chatterjee of CorpWatch told
Inter Press Service that even if Blackwater were
banned from operating in Iraq, most of its
employees could transfer to similar private
security firms and the overall security situation
for the US would not change much.
"It's
hard to police an itinerant group of mobile
warriors," Chatterjee said. "Even if Blackwater
itself were banned from operating in Iraq, it's
likely that its contractors could find work at
[comparable firms like] Aegis or Triple Canopy."
The Associated Press reported that US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had telephoned
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki late on
Monday, and that the two had agreed to conduct a
"fair and transparent investigation" into the
killings.
But by Monday evening it
remained unclear whether Rice's efforts would be
sufficient to head off Iraqi anger at the
perceived offences and impunity of Blackwater
contractors.
According to figures released
in July by the US State and Defense Departments,
more than 180,000 civilians are currently employed
in Iraq by the US government. The majority are
Iraqis, but the figure also includes over 20,000
US citizens and over 40,000 foreign nationals. The
figure also means that private contractors now
outnumber the approximately 160,000 US troops
currently in Iraq.
The most high-profile
of these employees are security contractors, the
armed forces that are responsible for protecting
strategically important people, sites, and
convoys. Although private security contractors are
forbidden from engaging in offensive operations,
their responsibilities can shade into the military
when they are attacked.
The private
security industry puts the number of security
contractors in Iraq at about 30,000, although
estimates vary widely.
Blackwater USA,
which has an estimated 1,000 employees in Iraq and
US$800 million in US government contracts, has
been one of the most prominent private security
firms operating in the country. Some of its
notable assignments have included protecting L
Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition
Provisional Authority, as well as Crocker, who is
currently the leading US diplomatic envoy to Iraq.
The firm came into the public eye in March
2004, when four of its employees were killed and
mutilated by an Iraqi mob in Fallujah; the
incident touched off the unsuccessful US attempt
to retake the city in April 2004.
Family
members of the four employees slain in Fallujah
have since sued Blackwater, alleging that the firm
failed to provide necessary equipment and manpower
that could have saved the employees' lives.
Blackwater has in the past been criticized
for using overly aggressive and confrontational
tactics. One prominent critic, retired US Marine
Colonel Thomas X Hammes, has argued that the
firm's aggressive approach to protection detracts
from the overall counterinsurgency effort to win
over the local population.
"The problem is
in protecting the principal they had to be very
aggressive, and each time they went out they had
to offend locals, forcing them to the side of the
road, being overpowering and intimidating, at
times running vehicles off the road, making
enemies each time they went out," Hammes told
Public Broadcasting Service in 2005.
Sunday's firefight in Baghdad was only the
latest in a series of tense incidents involving
Blackwater employees in Iraq that have highlighted
the ambiguous legal status of private security
contractors.
On December 24, 2006, an
off-duty and inebriated Blackwater employee shot
and killed an Iraqi bodyguard of vice president
Adil Abdul-Mahdi. The employee was fired and
brought back to the US, but as of yet no charges
have been filed in the case.
And in May, a
Blackwater guard killed an Iraqi driver near the
Interior Ministry in Baghdad, which set off an
armed standoff between the Blackwater convoy and
Interior Ministry forces.
As
private-sector employees, security contractors are
not subject to military court-martial, but under a
2004 decree of the Coalition Provisional
Authority, they cannot be tried by the Iraqi
justice system, either. As of yet, no US
contractors have been convicted for killing Iraqi
civilians.
The perception among Iraqis
that US security contractors can act with impunity
has engendered widespread resentment, and led the
Iraqi government to vow on Monday that the
perpetrators of Sunday's deaths in Baghdad will be
tried in Iraqi courts.
The State
Department's pledge of a thorough investigation
into the deaths appeared designed to head off this
same possibility by keeping judgment of the
contractors in US hands.
Messages left at
Blackwater headquarters requesting comment were
not returned.
The company was founded in
1997 by former US Navy Seal Erik Prince, who is
also a prominent conservative Christian and heir
to a billion-dollar car-mirror fortune. Blackwater
currently has about 2,300 employees operating
worldwide.
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